


What Happens After?

by ronandhermy



Category: War Boys (2009)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 05:02:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronandhermy/pseuds/ronandhermy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into David and George's lives after the end of the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happens After?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eudaimon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/gifts).



People get shot and survive all the time. They just don’t tell you that.

In the movies it’s always a dramatic death by a fatal gunshot wound that leaves the protagonist gasping his last meaningful line either in the arms of his lover or to an uncaring world. But in the real world the wound just kept bleeding, not an outpour but rather an oozing that declared yes I am wounded. It was painful, or it would be more so once the shock faded, but it wouldn’t kill him. Not for a good long while.

At least George was here, holding David up and putting pressure on the wound. He only wanted George to touch him because George understood. He understood him, and what they’d done and what would have to happen. He would make sure his dad wouldn’t touch him. He never wanted to claim that familial bond again in his entire life.

George was yelling and there were people taking him away from George. Strapping him to a gurney and putting him into an ambulance all the while asking him questions he never answered. The world seemed far away and he was floating in a strange sea of sound and color. And he could hear George’s voice until he couldn’t hear him anymore.

2.

David woke to a sterile hospital room and the feeling that he’d lost some time. He blinked slowly, his eyes adjusting to the dim light and the odd glow of various monitors lined up around his bed. His left hand felt heavy and glancing down he could see that someone was holding it. George was holding it.

David made some sound, not really a word but a noise to indicate he was back amongst the living. George’s head rose up from his lacks position and his grip on David’s hand tightened.

“Hey,” George said, softly, as though this was a dream.

“Hey,” David tried to say back but his voice cracked.

“Let me get you some water,” George said, standing up and moving to grab a cup with a straw from the side table. He let go of David’s hand and the injured boy mourned the loss of contact. But then George had his hand behind David’s head, gently lifting him so that he could better sip the water from the held cup. 

The water was tepid but it was a welcome relief from the scratchy dryness that reminded David of the desert. Of flames. David felt he could drown and never be quenched. 

“What happened?” David asked, letting the straw fall from his mouth, a small dribble of water slipping down his chin, his neck. And George knew he was really asking _what happened after?_

George lay David’s head back down on the lumpy hospital pillow, took a deep breath and waited before saying, “Well, your Dad’s not pressing charges so we’re not going to jail or anything. Least that’s what the attorney said. Your Dad is still down at county, waiting to hear if he’ll get bail set or not but it doesn’t seem likely right now. Truck full of dead bodies doesn’t really set well with judges. There’s a lot of talk right now about corruption and stuff. I wasn’t really listening when they explained it.”

There was a silence and David just waited.

Finally George said, “They, um, the county buried the bodies. Found out what names they could, but it’s hard to track down illegals. And Greg, he’s,” George paused and took a deep shaky breath before letting it out and saying, “he’s lying low for right now. He took it hard.” He clenched his hands together, almost as if in prayer, and he couldn’t seem to look the injured boy in the eye.

A silence fell over the two boys and David just watched George try to keep his composure. Finally, George looked at him again and said, “I was so fucking scared. You—you got—“ he couldn’t even finish the thought let alone the sentence. “When you were in surgery I thought---well, I was so damn close to---I’m just glad you’re all right.” A sudden brightness was in George’s eyes, tears that lingered but didn’t fall.

David just held out his hand, gently, and was grateful when George grabbed it and held on. Held on like it was the only damn thing left to make sense in this world.

“I’m not leaving,” David’s raspy voice seem to echo in the hospital room, “We’ve only just found each other. I’m not letting you go.”

And George smiled in a way that was born of exhaustion and relief, and just held on harder.

3.

He hadn’t lost anything too important. Some intestines had to be removed and he was unconscious for a good day and a half, but those were fairly light consequences in retro-speck. He was given pain meds but he knew he wouldn’t take them. It felt too much like a cop-out after everything that had happened. 

When he’d asked George how he’d managed to get into his hospital room, considering he wasn’t family, George had smiled and simply said, “I lied.” He’d told Nurse Rosa, who had a soft spot for the poor injured boy, the he was his brother. Adopted of course. Cat had backed him up on the lie and, considering she was now something of a local hero, it went off without a hitch.

David wasn’t going to complain since that meant George was with him. And he needed George because he was the only one that understood. The only one that realized their crime and the great injustices the world was capable of. 

4\. 

He is haunted by twelve strangers who wished for a better life and died in an airless, windowless truck. Every night he sees them in his dreams and every day they steal into his thoughts. David would walk through his empty house, the house that should have been burned long ago, and see these strangers lined up along the walls. 

And each one of them would say _We died for your greed and for your ignorance. Foolish boy. We did not want to die. And yet you live. How is it that you live?_

And he would reply _I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. We didn’t know._

But to those twelve strangers it’s no excuse, and in his heart of hearts David knows that too.

5.

George is with him through his father’s court appearances and trials, and it’s a comfort in a strange way. David views this as peeling off the scab on a wound that had healed long ago. He had loved his Dad, once, and in some ways he still did love him. Maybe. But not now. Not after this.

George held his hand when his father had walked into the courtroom in that orange jumpsuit, and David had held on for all he was worth. _What could he ever do for you?_ his father had once asked him. And David wanted to tell him _He is my strength when my own has failed. He sees me as I am and he still wants me. He still loves me. He loves me he loves me he loves me._

David didn’t think his father would ever understand.

6.

George has nightmares but he awakes only to quietly cry into the pillow he shares with David now. He muffles the tears but David knows they’re there. He can feel the shake of the shorter boy’s shoulders and sometimes, in the morning, he’ll trace the damn clothe of the pillowcase, trying to map out the path of the tears.

George’s Mom wants him to go to therapy. Thinks David should go to. Thinks it would do them all a world of good. But the thing about therapy is that you have to be able to talk about the things that bother you. And how could they explain it, all that happened, to another person when they couldn’t even explain it to themselves?

Sometimes he would just sit beside George on the living room couch and they would press into each other’s sides. Just feeling and leaning without saying a single word. There was nothing to say in those moments.

7.

He kissed George like he would never stop and George kissed like it was the last thing he would ever do. It was still new, still exciting, even months after that first test of these new waters and secretly David hoped it would always feel this way. Like he was on fire but in such a pleasant way that he would gladly burn for all eternity if it meant he could be with George.

He had loved George since they were ten and George told him that he wished they were brothers so they didn’t have to go to different houses after school. Sometimes he would wonder when George had fallen in love with him, but then he’d think it didn’t matter, not really, because he loved him now. 

When he felt George moving inside of him he was able to forget everything. The world, the past, the future. All that mattered was that present moment, of connecting with George and embracing everything that it meant.

And George was still here even after everything. Even after all of that. And David knew he wouldn’t leave unless he asked him too. And he would never ask that.

8.

George is haunted by twelve dead strangers but he tries to make his peace with them. He starts writing letters to immigration groups and amnesty groups, voicing his support and explaining some of what he has come to learn. That people are people no matter where they’re from and every person, no matter how poor or disadvantaged, deserves better then to die in a windowless, airless truck in the desert.

At first, no one responds to his letters. But he still writes them. Still sends them. And David reads them over and corrects the grammar and thinks that George is the braver of their pairing. 

Then a reply comes, first one and then many. And they all want to talk with this man-child who seems to speak from a deep seated experience. Was he an illegal himself? No. Did he know many illegal immigrants? Yes, but that wasn’t why he wrote. Would he come and speak? No, because his voice died in his throat and only lived in his hands.

Still George wrote and wrote and wrote as if by writing he could make things better. That he could atone for their sins. As if each letter was a eulogy never given. 

But the ghosts remained although the nightmares did not.

9.

David has taken to repairing old books. It seemed a strange task when he started it but he figures he might as well restore something that people actually treasure. He is both creating something new and yet preserving the past. And he finds that dichotomy oddly fitting for his own life.

George and he are still best friends, but they are so much more then that now. He still lives in his old house, but his Dad now sleeps in a jail cell. And will do so for another couple of years. He is book smart, but he works with his hands instead.

But he likes the quiet and the lack of questions that don’t really mean anything. 

 

10.

He is healing, his side now bearing a large scar and his heart still trying to patch up its own wound. Some wounds go deeper than others. Some linger in the shadows of health. 

David traces patterns of nonsense on George’s back, letting his fingers feel the smooth skin ripple beneath his hand. And George would place his hand on David’s side, lingering on the edge of his scar, and just slowly caress the tissue there. Neither moved to dissuade the other for their exploring touches.

They spoke in shared breathes and flesh meeting flesh and a past that could not be forgotten. It was as if two beings were becoming one. And maybe it was as close as it could get.

But David knew he was alive.

He felt it in every fiber of his being every time George reached out and touched him. In every ancient page he turned in those half-ruined books. In the sting of nightmares that would not fade.

After all, only the living can be haunted.


End file.
